


A (mostly) mental exercise

by Bold_as_Brass



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Canon Compliant, Episode: s03e02 The Sign of Three, Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-03-30 06:10:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3925804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bold_as_Brass/pseuds/Bold_as_Brass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“As a mental exercise, I've often planned the murder of friends and colleagues.”</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Sherlock plots how to kill off his nearest and dearest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. John Watson, Mary Morstan, Mycroft Holmes

_Now John, I’d poison. Sloppy eater, dead easy. I’ve given him chemicals and compounds that way. He’s never even noticed. He missed a whole Wednesday once, didn’t have a clue..._

“The problem,” said Sherlock, “is not the murder, but the getting away with it. Any idiot can kill someone. It’s the not being caught which requires a little more finesse.”

“What’s that?” said John jerking awake. He’d been drowsing in his usual chair, waiting for Mary to return from a shopping trip. She was out with the bridesmaids. Something to do with glittery hair...things.

“Misdirection,” said Sherlock. He abandoned his laptop and took his place opposite John, hands clasped beneath his chin, staring into the hearth. “Alternative explanations. Subterfuge. Do you follow?”

“Not really, no,” said John, but he rubbed his hair into its usual morning spikes and sat up straighter in his chair, willing enough to be expounded to.

“Everyone dies,” said Sherlock.

“Oh,” said John. “Cheerful.”

“But true. Everyone dies, but they die from a wide variety of causes.”

“Well that’strue,” said John.

“Although not very cheerful,” said Sherlock. “You, for example,” here he pointed a long forefinger across the hearthrug. “John Watson.”

“Yes.”

“John Hamish Watson, in fact.”

“We weren’t going to mention that.”

“White,” Sherlock continued unperturbed.

“Er, yes?”

“Male.”

“Yes,” John said with more certainty.

“Aged thirty-five to fifty.”

“Also yes.”

Sherlock folded his hands back beneath his chin. “The most common cause of death in your demographic is what?”

“Suicide,” said John, with the promptness of a medical professional.

“Yes,” said Sherlock. “Suicide. And you’re a GP, which means you have access to the means, and an ex-soldier which, I’m afraid, dramatically increases your risk. If I were to murder you, John, I would poison you and fake your suicide. Barbiturates in your tea, a hastily scrawled note - your handwriting is appalling, easy enough to imitate – and no one would be any the wiser.”

“Right,” said John. He looked at the teapot sitting on the bookcase, then at the empty mug balanced precariously on the arm of his chair. “Anything you want to tell me?”

“No,” said Sherlock. He smiled his own peculiar death’s head smile. “Merely a mental exercise.” His smile faded. “Though you should be less trusting about accepting drinks from strangers.”

“Is this for a case?” A certain eagerness became apparent in John’s posture. Sherlock was reminded of a rough haired Jack Russell; a faithful childhood friend. Always ready to take on the world at a moment's notice.

“Not this time,” he said. “Sometimes I like to plan murders. I find it relaxing. The trick is to make the death look plausible.”

“And mine would be?”

“Suicide, yes.” The front door slammed. “That must be Mary.”

“Hiya!” she called as she bounded up the stairs.

“You’ve been ages,” Sherlock said.

“I know. I left the girls looking at shoes. We did get these though.” She opened her bag to display a selection of hair clips, near identical to the set which had arrived in the post the previous week. “Like them?” she said to John with a conspiratorial wink at Sherlock.

“Er yeah,” said John, “Lovely. They’re very, um...” his eyes swivelled towards Sherlock, seeking help.

“Glittery,” said Sherlock.

“They are, aren’t they?” said Mary. She dropped a fond kiss on John’s furrowed brow and flopped onto the sofa. “My feet are killing me. That’s the last time I go down Oxford Street in heels. Flats for me from now on.”

“You said that last time,” said John.

“I know.” She pulled off a shoe and massaged her foot.

“Tea, Mary?” Sherlock said, raising the pot.

“No thanks,” she said. “I’m not a big fan of your tea, Sherlock, I’ll make myself a fresh one.”

 

* * *

  

“Thanks for coming,” Mary said as he got out of the taxi. She stood on her tiptoes and pecked him on the cheek. “You’ve saved John from a morning trying to pretend he can tell the difference between lilac and purple.”

She was in her heels again. She didn’t wear them with John; they made her taller than he was and she tried to avoid that. John didn’t mind, but she did it anyway. From love, Sherlock supposed.

“It’s fine,” he said. “What are friends for?” The flower market was always instructive: a long series of cobbled streets, full of colour, scent and the worst of human nature. An adulterer buying flowers for his lover and house plants for his spouse; a wedding florist picking out fake orchids and pocketing the difference; an amateur chemist searching for the glow of opium poppies amongst the sheaves of exotic flowers. “What about these?” he said pointing out a small branch of greenery clustered with delicately fringed purple blooms. “Lilac enough?”

“Oleander,” she said. “No, it’s poisonous. Don’t fancy it with all the children at the wedding. You never know what they might decide to eat.”

“Or John,” said Sherlock absently. “He’ll eat anything.” He examined the oleander. He knew of it but he wasn’t sure he could have identified it by sight.

“Oh God,” she said. “I know. I think it’s an army thing. I’m trying to train him out of it. How about these?” She picked up a bouquet of fresh green leaves and spikes of mauve flowers, presenting them to him with a flourish. The perfume was sweet and heavy and reminded him a little of decay. “Actual lilacs?”

“Too pink,” Sherlock said.

“You’re right. Lilac’s not lilac either. Pity.” She tucked the bouquet back amongst its brethren and they moved on. “Calla lilies?”

“Unfortunate connotations,” he said. “Almost sixty percent of funerals have calla lilies.”

One of the stall holders had been distracted by a customer. A small torrent ran from an abandoned hose and flooded across the cobbles. She shuddered and took hold of his arm to steady herself. “Let’s not have those then.”

They walked on in companionable silence. A stall of bright passion flowers caught her attention.

“You do check your breasts, don’t you, Mary?” he said as they reached it. She stopped dead and pulled away, casting him a quizzical look. “For lumps, rashes, dimpling,” he clarified, “breast cancer is the leading-”

“The leading cause of death for woman aged thirty-five to fifty,” she said. “Yes. I know, I’m a nurse.”

“Of course you are,” he said.

“Where did that come from?”

He shrugged. “Talk of funerals, I suppose. I’ve been undertaking research.”

“On breast cancer?” she said. “For a case?”

“A hypothetical case,” he said. “A mental exercise.”

“Right,” she said, “you had me wondering for a moment.” They began walking again. “Anyway you don’t have to worry, John checks them for me.”

“Oh,” said Sherlock. “Good. How about these?” He indicated the passion flowers.

“Pretty, but the pollen stains.” They walked a few steps further. “I check his balls at the same time,” she added with a glance under eyelashes.

“Mary,” he said repressively.

“Sorry.” She slipped on a piece of foliage and he took her arm to steady her. “Thanks. I wanted to talk to you about John, actually. I need a favour.”

“Of course.” They were approaching the end of the first section of the market. A busy road separated them from them from the next set of stalls.

“He’s been getting antsy lately.”

“Antsy?”

“Irritable. I think he misses the detective stuff.”

“Probably,” said Sherlock. They paused at the kerb, waiting for the traffic to ebb. Cars roared past, their petrol fumes mixing uneasily with the scent of flowers. Water rushed past into the gutter, making the footing treacherously slippery. One stumble and an unwary pedestrian would be beneath the wheels of an oncoming bus.

“I was wondering if you’d take him out?”

“Out?” he said and released her arm taking a half step back. The 26 bus, ten minutes late and looking to make up time, rounded the corner and roared up the road.

“On a case,” she said. “You know, like the old days. God, the traffic’s horrendous.”

“Always,” he said. “You want me to take John out on a case?” The bus accelerated towards them with scant regard for the narrowness of the street. It was hardly surprising that road traffic accidents killed dozens of Londoners each year. He readied himself and as Mary turned to reply, he pulled her backwards, just in time to miss the spray from the passing bus.

“Wow,” she said. “That was close. Let’s go down to the crossing. My mother always told me not to jaywalk.”

“Of course.” He stood aside politely, so she could walk on the inside of the pavement. “Your mother was American?” Like John, she rarely discussed her family.

Mary shrugged. “She spent time there when she was younger, I think.”

 _Liar_ said the watcher inside Sherlock’s brain, but Mary had taken his arm and had carried on talking. “What do you think?” she said, “Do you have anything you for him to do?”

And in the ensuing chatter about cases and flowers and weddings, the insight was deleted.

 

* * *

 

_ I’ve got a pair of keys to my brother’s house. I could easily break in and asphyxiate him - if the whim arose... _

Almost too easy, Sherlock thought as he slipped through the dim corridors of the east wing. And it wasn’t as though Mycroft would be the first senior civil servant to be found asphyxiated in dubious circumstances. He paused at the door of the library. A low fire burnt in the hearth, warding off the chill of a damp spring evening. Mycroft was a man of habit. At this time of night he would be making one last check of his emails before a nightcap, _The Archers_ , a bath and bed. It would be easy to intercept him here, where the shelves of leather bound books would muffle any cries.

“If you’ve lost your keys, Sherlock, you could have simply called ahead.”

He spun on his heel. Mycroft was sitting half-hidden in a deep armchair, dressed in a tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbow. His country clothes. The outfit was in stark contrast to Sherlock’s black polo neck, black trousers and black rubber-soled shoes.

“You’re early,” Sherlock said.

“I was expecting visitors.”

“You should be careful,” said Sherlock, “about visitors.”

“I am.”

“Entertaining all alone, in a big house like this.”

Mycroft sighed and took a sip from his glass of port. “If it’s any consolation, Sherlock, in the immediate vicinity I have two armed guards, a private secretary trained in martial arts, a chef - likewise - and a personal masseuse. Nonetheless, your concern is noted.”

“It’s not concern.”

“Of course it isn’t.”

Sherlock scowled and dropped his rucksack onto the Persian rug. It landed softly, containing as it did only a box of latex gloves, two pairs of sheer black stockings, a selection of seedy DVDs, several vials of amyl nitrate, a plastic bag and a packet of Polos. “No one even searched my bag,” he complained.

“That’s because we have prior experience of your little escapades. God only knows what we’d find in your bag. Have a seat – no, the leather chesterfield, I don’t want you getting mud on the good upholstery.”

Sherlock sat a little resentfully. “It’s not mud; it’s climbing chalk.”

“I see,” said Mycroft. He leaned back in his chair and appeared to pick his words with more than usual care. “Sherlock. Despite what I may have implied in the past, marriage is not, in fact, the same as death.”

“I know that,” said Sherlock.

“I realise,” Mycroft continued as though he hadn’t spoken, “that John and Mary’s impending nuptials may have ‘put the frighteners on’, as it were, but neither they nor I are on the verge of shuffling off this mortal coil.”

“Never crossed my mind.”

“No,” said Mycroft. “So that being the case, you don’t have to be constantly worrying about how to save us from a nasty end.”

Sherlock stared at him. “Have you met John?” he said eventually. “I leave him alone for five minutes and he ends up in a bonfire. Give him half an hour and he’s been kidnapped by terrorists.”

“A valid point,” Mycroft conceded. “Let us say then, that you don’t have to worry about saving _me_ from a nasty end by, for example, testing out my security arrangements. I can assure you, I have that matter very thoroughly under my control.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” said Mycroft. “So _why_ are you here?”

“Oh.” Sherlock pulled the envelope from his back pocket and passed it over. It had become a little crumpled in the crawl through the icehouse culvert.

“Ah,” said Mycroft, examining the card, “an evening ‘do.’ How kind of John and Mary to think of me. And what an awful lot of effort you’ve put into delivering it. We do receive the post here, you know.”

“It’s the country,” said Sherlock. He removed a piece of cobweb from his hair. “One can never be certain.”

“I see,” said Mycroft. He propped the card on the mantelpiece amongst a variety of far grander envelopes then turned back to Sherlock, with his most shark-like smile. “Well, as you’ve dropped by, may I interest you in a little game?”

Sherlock frowned. “What game?”

At his words, a footman entered the room bearing a cardboard box emblazoned with the legend _Operation._

 


	2. Greg Lestrade, Molly Hooper, Martha Hudson

_Lestrade’s so easy to kill, it’s a miracle no one’s succumbed to the temptation..._

“Smoking again, Lestrade?”

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” said Lestrade dropping his lighter. It fell with a metallic clatter onto the concrete floor and disappeared beneath a nearby silver Audi. “Do you spend all your spare time lurking in underground car parks trying to give me a heart attack?”

“No.”

“Could have fooled me,” said Lestrade. He bent to retrieve his lost lighter, grunting a little with the effort.

“Although,” said Sherlock emerging from the shadows into the flickering electric light. “Now you mention it, you're male. Over fifty-”

“Only just!” Lestrade protested.

“-the leading cause of death in your demographic is heart disease. Risk factors - high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes and,” here he looked meaningfully at the unlit cigarette in Lestrade’s hand, “smoking.”

“Yeah, all right,” said Lestrade, “don’t you start. Molly gave me an earful at the wedding.” He dropped the cigarette into his pocket and gave Sherlock a reproachful look. “How d’you get in here anyway? It’s meant to be secure parking.”

“I tail-gated one of your colleagues,” said Sherlock. “It was remarkably easy. You should probably speak to your facilities management about that. Otherwise anyone could make their way in here while you were at work.” He circled the Audi thoughtfully, then produced a slender pencil torch and shone it into the car’s interior.

Lestrade watched him, perplexed. “Lost something?”

“Me? No, just ‘checking out your new wheels.’ Leather upholstery.”

“Er. Yes?”

“Good for retaining fingerprints,” Sherlock observed. He played the torch beam over the Audi's dashboard. “Didn’t you used to drive a BMW?”

“Five series, yeah.”

“What made you change?”

“Procurement,” said Lestrade. He folded his arms and watched Sherlock a while longer. “You do know that’s not my car?” he said eventually.

“Oh,” Sherlock spun on his heel, his coat billowing around him, and aimed the torch at Lestrade’s face instead. “It isn’t?”

“No." Lestrade squinted into the light."It’s a police vehicle. We don’t drive our own vehicles on police business, Sherlock. We’re not _that_ dim.”

“I see,” Sherlock frowned, momentarily discomfited. “So where's your car?”

There was a pause. For a moment it seemed as though Lestrade wasn’t going to answer. Then he jerked his chin over his shoulder. “Over there.”

Sherlock followed his gaze towards the squat shadow, parked apologetically in one corner of the bay. “ _That’s_ your car?” he said. There was a ring of empty spaces around it, as though the other cars didn't want to be associated with it.

“What’s wrong with my car?” said Lestrade, with the heavy patience of a man who had had this exact same conversation several times previously.

“Nothing wrong with it,” said Sherlock approaching it cautiously. “It looks very...zippy.”

“It is,” said Lestrade. “It is zippy.”

“For its age. And easy to park too, I would imagine.” Sherlock kicked the car's tyres then dropped to his knees and examined the wheel nuts.

“We bought it for my daughter,” Lestrade admitted, his shoulders slumping. “There was some kind of exchange as part of the divorce. My wife got the ISAs; I got the car. The solicitors sorted it out for us.”

“You were robbed,” said Sherlock. His scrutiny of the tyres complete, he produced a mirror and slid it beneath the car, then played the torch beam across the underside of its low chassis.

“Yeah, I know. Don’t rub it in.” Lestrade watched as the examination continued. “Do you always keep a mirror in your jacket?” he asked after a while.

“Yes,” said Sherlock his voice coming hollowly from beneath the car, “always. Also a magnifying glass, a torch, a pair of tweezers, a pair of gloves and a first aid kit. I have very commodious pockets.”

“Oh,” said Lestrade. He watched a while longer then reached reflexively into his coat for the cigarette.

“Don’t even think about it,” said Sherlock, rising to his feet and brushing down his knees.

“God, you’re bossy. Are John and Mary coming back from honeymoon soon?”

“How would I know?” said Sherlock. He bent to shine the torch around the car’s interior, then straightened up, apparently satisfied. “The good news is that your ex-wife has inadvertently done you a favour. No self-respecting DCI would drive a car as small and as old as this.”

“Weirdly, you’re not the first person who’s said that.”

“Which significantly reduces the chances of your vehicle being targeted by any crook, delinquent or ill-wisher.” Sherlock smiled. In the weak lights of the car park, the effect was slightly sinister. “Unless they already knew it was yours.”

“Great,” said Lestrade with no particular enthusiasm. “So go on, then. What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it,” said Sherlock surprised. “It’s fine. Absolutely fine. No leaking brake lines, no slashed tires, no screwdrivers in the steering column, no suspicious devices attached to the chassis. It’s all absolutely fine.”

“Oh,” said Lestrade. “Good. That’s reassuring.” He squinted doubtfully into the car’s interior. “So, you think I should start getting the tube into work?”

“Can't do any harm,” said Sherlock. “The extra exercise would probably be good for your blood pressure. How _is_ your blood pressure, Gordon?”

Lestrade gave him a harried look. “Higher than it was ten minutes ago.”

 

* * *

 

“Molly,” he said from the corner of the lab, where he was propped uncomfortably upright. Sitting involved too much movement right now. “Molly, Polly, Dolly. Hello Molly.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said not looking at him. She dropped a file onto the lab bench and pulled up a microscope. “You should be in hospital.”

“Hospital’s boring.” Though he was missing his bed. And his morphine drip. Still there was something he had to do here first. Something important…

“Are you high? I’m not speaking to you if you’re high,” she said derailing that train of thought.

“I’ve been shot, Molly,” he said with difficulty. His lips felt sore. His mouth tasted of metal, a side effect of the antibiotics. “My opioid use is entirely analgesic.”

She looked up at that. Her eyes were red-ringed. “I know,” she said. “I came to see you.”

He frowned. “Did you?”

“I didn’t go in. Janine was with you.”

Janine? Oh _Janine._ Janine was going to sell his bees. “Do you like bees, Molly?”

“I’m allergic.” She returned to the microscope, positioning the slide then adjusting the focus carefully.

“To bees?”

“To bee stings. I have to carry an EpiPen.”

“Oh,” he said. “I didn’t know that. Do you have it with you?”

“It’s in my locker.”

“That’s…interesting.”

“Why is it interesting?”

“Sorry,” he waved his hand. It blurred briefly into three before reforming itself. “Painkillers. Bit fuzzy. I mean that’s a shame. Bees are interesting.”

Molly sighed. “Why are you here, Sherlock? You didn’t come here to talk about bees. You’re not well and I’ve got work to do.”

Yes, why was he here? What would have got him out of bed? Something important. Janine…the engagement. Oh yes. “How’s Don, Ron, Tom? Tom-Tom. How’s Tom? Your fiancé. Tom?”

“We’ve split up,” she said. “You know that. The engagement’s over. Don’t be cruel.”

Oh yes. He did know that. Morphine – so lovely but bad for brainwork. That was why he was here. “Do you want me to get rid of him for you?” he said.

“What?” 

“Not good to have ex-boyfriends cluttering up the place,” he said vaguely. “They cause problems. Seen it lots of times. Always the ex-boyfriend.”

“What do you mean – get rid of?”

“Well, _I_ can’t do anything,” he said. “Not at the moment. But Mycroft could, I’m almost certain, if I asked him nicely. He made me disappear for two years after all.”

“You’re not to do anything to Tom,” she said, standing, “do you hear me? It’s not his…” she rounded the lab bench and faltered to a halt.

“Yes, fine,” he said, irritably. He felt hot. His shirt was wet with sweat. “It was just a suggestion, a friendly-”

“Sherlock,” she interrupted. “You’re bleeding.”

“Am I?” He looked down. There was a ring of red droplets around his bare feet, bright against the pale flooring. “Oh yes. Contamination risk. So sorry.”

The floor seemed to be sliding closer. He heard her pick up the phone, then nothing else.

 

* * *

  

It took five minutes of shouting for Mrs Hudson to hear him, but when she did she climbed the stairs to the 221B promptly enough. Sherlock was waiting on the landing, washed but not dressed. She  knew  by not that meant it would going to be a middling day in the slow process of convalescence.

“Sherlock,” she said, “I was baking. Can’t John help?”

“John’s in his room. Anyway it’s you I wanted to talk to. Show me your shoes.”

“What?”

Sherlock scowled. Pain made him ill-tempered. “Your shoes, Mrs Hudson. Show me your shoes!”

She lifted one foot doubtfully. She was wearing a neat pair of laced up boots with a low flared heel.

“No,” Sherlock decided, making towards the living room. “They will not do. Put these on.” He gestured towards a cardboard box sitting on the coffee table.

“What are they?” she opened the box. Inside was a pair of shoes. They were solid looking, flats with a sturdy grip and velcro straps. She picked one up doubtfully, dangling it from her finger. “Oh no, I’m not wearing these, dear. They’d make me look about eighty.”

Sherlock leaned against the door and stared at her. “You’re seventy-five,” he said.

“And they’d make me look about eighty.” She put the shoe firmly back into the box and closed the lid.

“Slips, trips and falls, Mrs Hudson, are the second biggest killer of the over seventy-fives. Second only to dementia. Which, frankly, it may be too late to address.”

She batted him on the arm, careful to avoid his IV line. “Don’t be cheeky.”

“You should buy a bungalow,” he said, pulling his dressing gown more tightly around him.

“Why?”

“A bungalow has no stairs. No stairs means no tripwire. No tripwire means no falls.”

“But why would there be a tripwire?"

Sherlock shrugged. "It's a hypothetical trip wire, Mrs Hudson."

"I don’t want a bungalow. And anyway, where would you boys live if I moved?”

“Well don’t blame me when you go plummeting to your death down three flights of stairs in your impractical footwear,” he said, exasperated.

“Listen you, when Frank and I first got married-”

“Oh God,” said Sherlock, he towed his drip back towards his chair, flopped into it and picked up a newspaper. “Wedding stories.”

“You like my wedding stories,” she said.

“I tolerate your wedding stories,” he corrected, “because at present I am unable to escape them. Which is a different thing entirely.”

“Well anyway,” she took a seat in John’s armchair. “When Frank and I first got married, he took me to Florence. We went along the Ponte Vecchio, and there were all these shoe shop  along the bridge. Well, it was the nineteen fifties. You could get black sandals or white sandals in  Britain. But _there_. Oh _,_ you could get shoes in all the colours of the rainbow, teal and mauve and peacock blue. Beautiful. Frank bought me this pair of strappy purple sandals with little sparkly bits in the heels. Diamante, can you imagine?” She laughed at the memory of a summer day, over fifty years ago. “He took me out dancing. It was like dancing on clouds. We danced all night and when the sun came up we walked back to our hotel, hand in hand.”

“Fascinating,” said Sherlock from behind his newspaper.

“And I’ve still got those sandals,” she said pushing herself to her feet. “They look like new. I wear them sometimes. And they’re what I want to be wearing when I finally conk out. Not some big bother boots with sensible heels. And you can’t make me, William Sherlock Scott Holmes.”

“My mother,” said Sherlock, “has a lot to answer for.”

“I’ll say,” she said. “But you mean well. I’ll go and get you your elevenses, shall I?” She looked towards the ceiling of the living room. There was no sound of life from the floor above. “Do you think John’ll join us today?”

“Probably not,” Sherlock said. “Bring it anyway. And keep one hand on the banister,” he added as she started towards the stairs.

 


	3. CAM

“The problem,” said Sherlock, “is not the murder, but the getting away with it.” He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair.

“Say again?” said John. He was standing by the window, looking down onto Baker Street. For once the road was empty. The ceaseless roar of traffic had stopped. In the quiet of Christmas morning, church bells could be heard across the city.

“Any idiot can fake a car accident, or a suicide, or push someone in front of a bus. EpiPens get lost, brakes fail. Even the cleverest men can make mistakes in the heat of passion.”

“Right,” said John. He abandoned the window and returned to his armchair, looking glad of the distraction. “A case?” 

“In a manner of speaking. A puzzle which has been occupying me of late.”

“Which is?”

“Some men don’t have partners, or siblings. They don’t walk around in public. They park their vehicles in secure facilities. They never eat out. They live in bungalows. What then?”

“I don’t follow.”

“How does one deal with a man like that?”

“And by deal with, you mean…?”

“Killing them. Yes How does one kill a man a man like that and make it look like an accident?”

“Well.” John sat back and looked around the room for inspiration. “I don’t think you can, can you?”

Sherlock’s expression was sombre. “I think you’re right.”

“That’s a turn up. Hold on. I think I hear something.” John returned to the window. “Yeah, it's a black Jaguar. I thought he might have gone for something a bit more festive.”

“It's Mycroft. He doesn’t really do festive,” said Sherlock. “You’d better go and get the presents.”

“You’ve got presents?”

“Mrs Hudson got presents. I was too ill to stop her.”

“Where are they?”

“On my bed,” Sherlock said. He got up a little stiffly and went to collect his scarf. “Of course,” he added to John’s empty chair. “Sometimes subtly is over-rated. Sometimes evil is so malignant that all one can really do is put a bullet into its chest.”

“What was that?” said John. He had returned with a bag of brightly wrapped boxes.

“Oh nothing,” said Sherlock. “We should go. Don’t want to make Mycroft any rattier than he already will be.”

“Will Mary be at the cottage?”

“Yes,” said Sherlock. “I would think so.”

John took a deep breath. “I don’t want to do this,” he said.

“I know you don’t.”

“I’ve seen battle, fought terrorists. But I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to face my pregnant, estranged, ex-assassin wife.”

Sherlock watched his friend thoughtfully. “Are you going to?”

John swallowed, then squared his shoulders and lifted his chin in a way which Sherlock found dearly familiar. “Yes.”

“Good man. Bring your gun.”

John looked startled. “Things aren’t that bad between us, Sherlock.”

Down from the hallway, came the sound of a mournful knock. It was the knock of a man who most decidedly did not like Christmas but who had resolved to get it over with.

“Glad to hear it,” said Sherlock. “Nonetheless. Bring it anyway. Better safe than sorry. And bring a coat too. Mother takes the position that central heating is a sign of moral decrepitude.”

John sighed but hurried up to his room. When he returned his brow was furrowed. “Sherlock,” he said as he pulled on his jacket, “all this talk of murder. It is a bit macabre, you know, even for you.”

“Christmas brings it out in me, I’m afraid,” said Sherlock. He buttoned his coat and handed John the bag of presents.

“Right,” said John. He weighed the bag doubtfully in his hand. “You’re not actually planning on killing anyone are you?”

Sherlock gave him a wintry smile. “I never have yet."

“That’s true.” John’s wrinkles eased. “So it's just a mental exercise?”

“Mostly,” said Sherlock, he stood aside to let John pass then followed him down the stairs to the sound of tolling bells.


End file.
